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Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Zombies 101 Lesson ! Sylabus!

Tomorrow
Night (Jan. 25th)
on the Creepercast... get your thinking cap on folks because its time
to get schooled! Zombies
101: Lesson 1 – Origins, VooDoo and Re-animation! With
philosophical discussions about White
Zombie (1932), Serpent in the Rainbow (1988) & Frankenstein
(2004). See the syllabus below or it is posted in the notes area of our facebook page
(http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=341020252589019)!
Join us Wednesday night @ 9pm MT/8 PT/11ET immediately following the
Walking Dead Week in Review Fancast @ www.creepercast.com/live!

Zombies 101

A study of the zombie
phenomena in culture and as a film genre:

Lesson 1 Syllabus

Origination – Voodoo and
Re-Animation

On the Creepercast we will be
discussing primarily the films in bold and their impact/influence on
culture and the genre as a whole. This syllabus is reference
material. Eventually I hope to it will grow into a well put together
college course for any film studies program!

Definition of 'zombie':

Miriam Webster
(http://www.merriam-webster.com):

zom-bienoun
\'zäm-bē\

usually zombi

a person held to resemble the
so-called walking dead; especially:automaton

a machine or control mechanism
designed to follow automatically a predetermined sequence of
operations or respond to encoded instructions

an individual who acts in a
mechanical fashion

Latin, from Greek, neuter of automatos

First Known Use: 1645

robot

a machine that looks like a human
being and performs various complex acts (as walking or talking) of a
human being; also: a similar but
fictional machine whose lack of capacity for human emotions is often
emphasized

an efficient insensitive person
who functions automatically

a device that automatically
performs complicated often repetitive tasks

a mechanism guided by automatic
controls

Czech, from robota compulsory labor;
akin to Old High German arabeit trouble, Latin orbus orphaned —
more at orphan

First Known Use: 1922

Encyclopedia Britannica:

zombi, also spelled zombie, in Vodou, a dead
person who is revived after burial and compelled to do the bidding
of the reviver, including criminal acts and heavy manual labor.
Scholars believe that actual zombis are living persons under the
influence of powerful drugs, including burundanga
(reportedly used by Colombian criminals) and drugs derived from
poisonous toads and puffer fish.
(http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/657810/zombi)

Bad Voodoo: The distinctions between good and bad supernatural power
are relative and depend on how moral legitimacy is judged. This
becomes clear when the spiritual power invoked is studied more
closely. In a number of revealing African cases, the word that
denotes the essence of witchcraft (e.g., tsau among the
West African Tiv and itonga among the East African Safwa), the
epitome of illegitimate antisocial activity, also describes the
righteous wrath of established authority, employed to curse
wrongdoers. This essential ambivalence is particularly evident in
Haitian voodoo, where there is a sharp distinction between man-made
evil magic powers, connected with zombies (beings identified as
familiars of witches in the beliefs of some African cultures), and
benevolent invisible spirits identified with Catholic saints. This
antithesis between witchcraft and religion, however, is always
problematic: after his death, the malevolent spirits or powers that
an ancestor has used for his personal benefit become accrued by his
descendants’ protective spirits (loas). Magic has thus turned into
religion (the converse of the more familiar process in which
outmoded religions are stigmatized by their successors as magic).
(http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/646051/witchcraft/214882/Witchcraft-in-Africa-and-the-world?anchor=ref703868)

Director:
Victor Halperin, 1932. This movie is on video and has a running
time of 73 min. " Now we understand each other a little
better", says Bela Lugosi, as he turns his rival into one of
his eerie slaves. This, by no means, is one of his more
well-known lines from a movie; but after seeing this film, I am
convinced that it has to be one of his most sinister quotes.
Lugosi plays the evil overseer of a sugarmill, who turns his
workers into zombies to do his dirty work. White Zombie is a
wonderful low-budget flick, with wonderful background settings
that add to the eeriness of the film. For the most part, the
zombies are mindless creatures that would not have hurt anybody,
if it had not been for Lugosi. So, they really do not add to any
of the misconceptions that Americans have about Voodoo. The few
Haitians we do see in the film are burying one of their dead.
None of them are depicted as being evil. The real big
"misconception" in the film is a carved Voodoo doll.
Iam under the impression that they do not exist. As one last note
on the film; the way that Lugosi turned his victims into zombies,
was to give them a special powder that would feign death. He
would then go and get the body, giving it another concoction.
Perhaps Victor Halperin was Wade Davis' "secret society."
(Willey)

Director: Wes Craven, 1988. This project is on video, with a
running time of 98 min. "In the legends of Voodoo, the
serpent is a symbol of Earth, the rainbow is a symbol of heaven.
Between the two, all creatures live and die. But because he has a
goal, man can be trapped in a terrible place, where death is only
the beginning."

Director:
Marcus Nispel, 2004. This movie is on video and has a running
time of 88 min. Two hundred years after Mary Shelley's
novel the brilliant but mad Doctor has sustained his creature
and himself over two centuries through genetic experimentation.
In present-day America Detective O'Connor is investigating a
series of horrific murders which leads her to the doctor and his
creature. What she uncovers reveals the strange evolution the
doctor and his creation undergo over the course of two centuries
and the divergent paths creator and monster take in pursuing
good or evil.